BRITISH GT PREVIEW18 APRIL 2019 AUTOSPORT.COM 49here’s an air of change around the British GT
Championship paddock in 2019. Of the 14 cars
from seven manufacturers entered in GT3 – the
biggest field assembled since 2016 – only two
have competed in the championship before, while
last year’s championship-winning triumvirate of Jonny Adam,
Flick Haigh and Optimum Motorsport has been split up. Haigh
won’t be defending her title, while Adam returns to the TF Sport
squad with which he won the 2016 title and will race alongside
Graham Davidson, a race winner at Spa last year.
After seven years of service, the Aston Martin V12 Vantage
that Adam has raced to each of his three British GT crowns has
been replaced by a new V8 turbo-powered model, while series
stalwarts Derek Johnston – the 2016 champion with Adam –
and serial runner-up Jon Minshaw are absent too.
With new machinery from Aston joined by an Evo version
of the Lamborghini Huracan, a second-generation Bentley
Continental, McLaren’s brand-new 720S GT3 and a car new
to the series – albeit proven elsewhere – in the form of the
T
BMW M6, British GT will have a very different feel this year.
It’s not hard to see why some are billing this as the most
unpredictable season in recent history.
Amid the upheaval, the Mercedes-AMG GT3 has suddenly
gone from young pup to the elder statesman of the grid, which
Merc runners RAM Racing and Team ABBA Racing will hope to
take advantage of in the early going. RAM driver Callum Macleod
set the second fastest time at the Donington media day, albeit
with the caveat that three Astons, Balfe’s McLaren and series
returnee JRM – running 2017 title-winning pair Seb Morris
and Rick Parfitt – did not run and that those present had yet
to receive their 2019 Balance of Performance. Macleod is now
targeting a title push in his fourth season alongside Ian Loggie.
“The team knowing the car is a big help,” he says. “We arrive at
a circuit, they set the car up and it feels good from the off. It will
be a difficult one to call with the new cars and different levels of
BoP, but I think we’ll be in the mix more consistently. We’ve got
a package where we can be competitive at any circuit in any given
situation, so we’ll certainly be pushing hard from the off.”